Word has just come this evening in that Palm has just updated its Palm.com website. The new design is a bold departure from their old layout with a fresh new look which seems to coincide with the upcoming new launch.

The refreshed site places an upfront focus on the products with large high resolution, interactive images and panoramic backgrounds. At the moment the homepage seems to single out the Treo Pro, Centro and Treo 800w as the company's only current products at this time. Handhelds are no longer featured on the main site.

clever design

Well, at least it looks cool and modern, I never liked that old design. But this new design is sllloooowwww - must run on Windows Mobile :)

Yep, not a mention of anything but those 3 phones, you'd think that's all they have. BUT - if you dig down deep via the "shop" link, you'll eventually make it to a legacy designed page that has the TX, E2, and Zire22 - cobwebs and all.

Perhaps the site is just in transition, but it's pretty silly of them to hide the fact they also have handhelds. Colligan's island seems to act as though PDAs are the devil's spawn nowadays, such a strange reaction probably fostered by the jackboot of the cell companies...

RE: clever design

For all intents & purposes, the 800w is a dead smartphone walking, so it's as good as gone after the CDMA Treo Pro breaks cover.

Palm's "active" lineup for the first half of '09 will basically be: Centro 64mb GSM & CDMA, Centro 128mb CDMA, Treo Pro GSM & CDMA. And that's all they will continue to have until whatever is announced Thursday hits the market in May/June/July/August (take yer pick!)

On a related, I LOVE the new site facelift. Great sense of design and style given the rather bland topic of candybar smartphones. I really like the direction Palm is going aesthetically starting with the Treo Pro. Let's hope they can keep it up and translate it to Nova and new product(s)!

RE: clever design

I bet it's gonna be a hip, slimmed down Martin Luther King into February, then on to a hip, slimmed down Leprechaun, then a hip, slimmed down Easter Bunny, on through the year. As long as it's young, hip and slim - Palm is gonna be there!

Treo Pro: Work - Life, perfectly balanced

Sounds like Colligan's fat middle group to me. So, what we will see on Thursday is a new OS to run on the Treo Pro and maybe an announcement of when they will be available on specific carriers. If Palm's big thing is going to be phone based, they had better have the carries signed up with clear release dates before making their announcement.

RE: Treo Pro: Work - Life, perfectly balanced

It think Palm has been in a use it or get off the pot mode for over a year now. Looking at the site, I get it is a pretty divided company now with different visions and directions. I hope the layoffs last year did some good to put the company in a single direction. The snare drum is playing a drum roll right now. Thursday is either a "ta-da!" or a "wah-wah-wah."

Seems like theyd keep offering the PalmOS Treos until new devices

...are unveiled.I'm surprised the PalmOS treos are gone. I considered the centro, but opted for the classic treo for several reasons including a bigger screen. Perhaps they didn't want to 'confuse' the market with lots of very similar choices. Perhaps a good idea. I think palm was historically TERRIBLE about clarity in their offerings! The palm 680 vs the 700 vs the 750 vs the 755. Who'd have thought that the 680 and 755p are fundamentally the same device differing only by network choice. I know a guy who bought a 'higher number' thinking it was newer. Not a bad assumption, but a wrong one.

The centro had a better plan for naming. Centro was centro, even if it was CDMA vs GSM-as it should be. Centro meant PalmOS. And now it appears that all treos are WinMobile. Probably the Nova devices will have a new name for the lineup-Orgazmo or some such.

Also, what happened to the "We'll keep selling PDA-only devices as long as there is demand" thing. I seriosuly doubt that demand dried up on the same day they turned-up their claus-free web site.

RE: Seems like theyd keep offering the PalmOS Treos until new devices

Office Depot, Office Max, and Circuit City ceased offering Palm handhelds in 2006ish. CompUSA is just a shell of its former self so I cannot comment on them.

That leaves Best Buy (now apparently in the process of removing the PDAs on a store-by-store basis) and some Staples locations as the remaining purveyors of Palm handhelds.

And yes, the Z22 & E2 are sold in hanging, blister-packed retail-oriented packages. The TX is still being offered in Palm's traditional square cardboard "cake box" packaging.

My theory is that the PDAs have been out of production for some months now but there is still sufficent inventory in the channel to carry Palm through the next quarter or two. Expect another palm.com "Free Z22 w/ purchase of TX" type blowout pricing and/or a myseriously large quanitty of like-new refurbs appearing on Overstock.com in the coming months...

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

If this goes how I think it will, it is not going to be all Colligan speaking. No matter what he did or didn't do on Nova personally, I'm sure Jeff will be there having a handsome share of the limelight. Who knows, Donna may say a few things too. A celebrity appearance or plug would be helpful too.

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

There will be no Jeff, no Donna, no Rob Haitani, and probably just token appearances from Ed. This is Palm in pure survival/circle the wagons mode, plain & simple.

I do, however, have a sneaking suspicion that these hipsters will be on hand handing out autographed Centro brochures and posing for pictures. They should provide more than enough star power for the event:

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

Ryan and I will both be there to cover as much as humanly possible. If there's ANY hands-on time to be had with ANYTHING, it'd better expect a fondling thorough enough to make Palm's event look like a bordello filled with geeks.

And 12" is FINE for a not-a-netbook ultraportable. From the initial stills & specs, that HP is the screen size, formfactor & price I'been begging for since the original Toshiba Libretto AGES ago!

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

1. But they claim Nova was already well in progress deep in the Palm skunkworks long before Rubinstein's arrival

2. And isn't Rubinstein a "hardware" kinda guy? So far all that we've heard from accurate sources about his Palm involvement are 11th hour tweaks to the Centro in '07 (from the NY Times piece done shortly after the Centro's debut IIRC) and the Treo Pro. And one of the recent articles-SF Gate??-said that Nova will bear "some" stamp of Rubinstein's influence but is not his "baby" per se from what I gather.

3. They don't NEED anyone to really show. Palm has never really had the obsessive cultist thing going on ala Apple or John Romero & John Carmack or John Mayer + RIM etc. A small handful of PR drones showcasing some tantilizing hardware & hands-on time with Nova is all they need to generate a huge buzz!

RE: MacWorld Keynote = FAIL. Cue Colligan!

I will say this about the gas guzzling chevy coupe pulling into CES - it better have teeth. Apple and Google have lured away developers and buyers alike - and let's face it - "PalmOS developers" have long since left for greener pastures. With carriers consolidating on fewer platforms, the sad reality is that it may already be too late. Nova will be starting from a zero sum position - square one. Classic PalmOS apps are obsolete and the fact that Nova will run then will in no way entice. We need NEW APPS. Since developers follow consumers, not the other way around, Palm will face an uphill battle getting its platform off the ground. If their first (and only) handset goes carrier exclusive with a CDMA network Nova will be stillborn, tied to an already shrinking market and limiting its customer base (at least you can UNLOCK a GSM smartphone).

We'll see what happens. The nostalgic side of me wishes the very company that first kindled my love for mobile technology will once again blaze trails and take a leadership position, but then again, having followed this company for the past decade that seems highly unlikely.

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